New York City Apartment Rental Statistics

Three-quarters of all housing in the Big Apple is rental apartments. There are 2,146,892 occupied rental apartments, with over 55,000 apartment buildings with five or more units.

The city includes that five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. The city spreads of millions of be and thousands of demographic categories. But there is one commonality: they rent.

NYC is very different the rest of the United States. The 69% of NYC reside in apartments, versus the US average at 33%. Only 31% of New Yorkers own their own home.

A look at each borough can tell you great deal about the culture and life in that area of the city.

In the Bronx, there are 390,348 rental units. Fully one-third of those are in buildings with only 1-4 units. This gives the Bronx a bit more intimacy. There are less giant housing complexes and far more small apartment buildings and mixed use buildings. Classically a mixed use building would have a retail shop or shops on the street level, with apartments above.

Manhattan, the place most people think of as New York, has a total of 589,885 units, 190,000 of those in building with over 100 units. Obviously, that many large apartment buildings means that many people in Manhattan live high rise buildings, skyscrapers. There are also 140,000 units in buildings with 20-49 units and 106,000 in buildings with 5-19 units, so the mid-size also well covered. There are only 79,700 units in buildings with 1-4 units. While that’s still a lot buildings, it is a much small number than in the Bronx.

There are 249,220 rental units in buildings with only 1-4 units in Queens, much more than 50% of the 444,663 total rental units in the borough. Anyone who has been to Queens will tell you it feels like a series of small neighborhoods and this type of housing would give it that feel.

Similarly, 440,719 units out of 662,615 in Brooklyn are in buildings with 19 or less units. Brooklyn for a renter will feel more like a mid-size city than Manhattan, which is clearly the center of the giant housing complexes.

Staten Island is the smallest of the boroughs in terms of population. It is the farthest removed and the most intimate. The Island has only 59,381 rental units, 45,300 of which are in buildings with 1-4 units.

Apartments in NYC have been getting less affordable for every year. The purchasing power of the median NYC to rent an apartment in the city has dropped every for over 30 years.

Before the 1980s, the average price of apartments in all of the city was less than $750. It is now over $2000 in Manhattan and around $1000 per month in the other four boroughs.

The most impressive fact about life in New York is the 90+% of everyone in the City lives near a park. For anyone who knows that city would surprise that Staten Island has the lowest percentage near a park, around 64%.

The age of buildings around the City tell a great deal about how the city has advanced. On Staten Island, the average age of rental buildings is only 38 years, while in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Bronx it is 77 and 78 years old. In Queens, the average age is 63 years.

This can be a key to being able to rent in New York City. Having a newer building should be in your advertisement.

New York City can be one of the most profitable places in the world to be a landlord, but step with caution and keep an eye on the condition of your building, given very high average ages. Also, use any place where your building varies from this norm to advertise and attract great tenants.

Posted on May 09, 2013

Related

Three-quarters of all housing in the Big Apple is rental apartments. There are 2,146,892 occupied rental apartments, with over 55,000 apartment buildings with five or more units.
The city includes... More